Anchorman (dir. Adam McKay, 2004) — Review

Download the Anchorman screenplay for personal, private use.

Ah, San Diego. Named by the Germans in 1904, meaning…

‘A whale’s vagina’.

Many 2000s bro comedies have come under fire from the politically-adjusted attitudes of the present decade. Members of the so-called Frat Pack — the gaggle of lardy men who romped across our screens in that glorious decade railing a parade of stunning, insecure younger women, as per Wedding Crashers, Knocked Up and so forth — find themselves subjected to the ire of Cosmo thinkpieces and Buzzfeed listicles flaming the implausibility of the central plot. Fortunately, 2004’s Anchorman escaped these charges by using its 70s setting to immerse its audience in a caper of furry-chested masculinity too ridiculous to support any kind of intellectual analysis. Two tickets to the gun show, please.

Will Ferrell, one of the greats of 21st-century Saturday Night Live, brings his trademark qualities to the central role: massive stature (in several senses) and an endearing refusal to pass judgement on his character. Ron Burgundy is a giant of the joyously sexist newscasting landscape of 70’s San Diego — a flabby, mustachioed lunkhead whose only emotional commitment is to his dog Baxter. Along with his team — Brick (Steve Carrell) on weather, Champ (David Koechner) on sports, and Brian (Paul Rudd) as lead field reporter — Burgundy fronts KVWN, the highest rated news network in San Diego. His world is overturned by the forced addition of Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate), a beautiful and intelligent ‘lady anchor’ with whom he falls in love, only to have her usurp his ratings.

Anchorman is really the sum of its parts — and excellent parts they are, anchored, as it were, by a typically committed performance from Ferrell, who embodies his grotesque role with enough commitment to keep the audience connected to the character as he makes his shrieking, shirtless, lecherous, milk-slobbering way through an ultimately redemptive character arc. Other characters orbit around him, an array of foils to this affectionate caricature of seventies masculinity, each blessed with an iconic, quotable trait or snippet of dialogue: Brick, the mentally retarded weatherman who reels off such lines as ‘I love lamp’ with a dead-eyed glare; Brian, with his love for the Sex Panther fragrance; even Baxter, the ‘tiny furry Buddha’ who ends up getting booted off the San Francisco bridge by a scene-stealing Jack Black, has spawned his share of cultural touchstones. Perhaps the peak of Anchorman’s collage of early-aughts glory comes in the news network street fight scene, a glorious meta-staging of the battle between Hollywood bro-packs, with Ferrell/Burgundy’s KVWN gang facing off against groups led by Vince Vaughn, Luke Wilson, Tim Robbins and Ben Stiller, playing the leader of a Spanish-language news team. “To this day, that’s still the craziest day I’ve ever had,” McKay said a decade later upon the release of the Anchorman sequel. “And that scene, more than any scene in the movie, became the signature thing, in the sense that you had the feeling that the movie could do anything.”

Anchorman really could do anything, with its rogues gallery of 00’s American comic greats and its refusal to commit to anything beyond the utterly dedicated, and convincing, central performance of its eponymous star. Ferrell’s dedication to the ridiculous role, as in so many SNL bits, keeps the whole thing together, from Fred Armisen’s iconic ‘yazz flute’ scene (another SNL reunion) to the impromptu acapella gang rendition of ‘Afternoon Delight’. Arguably, it’s Ferrell’s singular capability of getting the audience on-board with the mentality of his ridiculous creation that’s kept the movie feeling lovably ridiculous over fifteen years down the line. Ron Burgundy is a risible fossil at the start of the movie — but unlike so many other male leading men of his vintage, he shows an awareness of his position in a “glass case of emotion”, and a willingness to change. Staying classy, indeed.

Áine Kennedy is a London-based writer and manager of the ScriptUp blog.